Ice Cream it is!
Okay, I'm back. Say when, I'm there!
Boy, do I have alot of shit to tell!
Egad. Where do I start. Chronologically, I suppose. Warning: it's REALLY LONG!
Tuesday, March 4. Load the equipment and guitars into the car and I'm off to Buffalo. Go directly to rehearsal at Depew high School, where I get to play "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" for the 6th time. Woo hoo! I'm setting up and sizing up the actors and musicians. What a great pit - especially for high school people. Lots of really good talent there, except for the drummer, who was reaaaaaaaaaaaly baaaaaad. But I was happy to learn that my buddy Tim, a Buffalo musician, is playing bass in the pit with me. He's a sweetie.
Wednesday, March 5. I go to the hair salon to color my hair. I'm there 3.5 hours. My stylist , Kelly, tried a new line on me, and I was the first to use the violet color, and it didn't work at all. So we had to do the WHOLE THING again, using a different product line that came out great. But I had enough time to grab a quick bite and head to rehearsal. The sound system was working tonight, so I got to hear the singers. Let's just say the guy playing Joseph was not cast for his singing or acting. Can we say GORGEOUS??? I should have taken a picture of him in his little white loin cloth, with his V-shape torso and washboard abs. And this for Cheryl- he looked just like Jeff. I couldn't get over how built this little shit was. The female lead (The Narrator) was pretty good. I thought she sucked at first, but that was just tech week jitters. She actually saved the show on opening night, and saved a scene another day. More on that later.
Thursday, March 6. Animal lovers, please skip this paragraph. My friend Dee (who I stay with when in Buffalo) and I went with our dear, dear friends Katie and Char to have their dog put to sleep. Alice, the border collie, was a great dog, who was just diagnosed with a brain tumor and was having seizures and having a hard time standing up and the whole thing. Dee and I were her Aunts. Alice was 15, and has been with Katie since she was 15. Alice and Katie were inseparable and lived their whole lives together, doing everything together. Alice and I shared the couch together whenever I stayed over at Katie and Char's, and we'd gone out for more than a few ice creams together. That was Alice's last wish with me, to take her for an ice cream, which I did a couple of weeks ago. I have a photo.
So I'm not going into it except to say that it was my job to drive Katie and Char and Alice to the vet, where we met Dee, whose job it was to drive Katie and Char home. Dee and I were with them through it all. It was one of the saddest things I ever experienced, and we bawled our eyes out for god knows how long. Then I had to go right to rehearsal like that. After rehearsal I went to Katie and Char's to hang for awhile and drink beer and cry some more. Then in the middle of the night I woke up and bawled still more. And if I think about it, I still cry, so I'm gonna stop thinking about it now.
Friday, March 7. So I fell back to sleep, but when I woke up this morning my nose was all raw on one side, I thought from crying and blowing my nose so much. I ended up working that day, serving papers for the woman who bought her business from me. So I earned some money while I was there (besides what I got for doing the show), which is good because I spent alot while there. I also managed to sell seven CD's to various cast and crew members this week. After I worked, Friday was opening night. So I got into the shower and watched THE VIOLET DYE from my hair wash right out with the shampoo! Great. $65 bucks literally down the drain. But not having the time to BITCH about it, I dutifully continued my grooming, got into my tux and went to the show.
These shows are always dangerous, because the band room is always filled with tons of crap food. But I was sooooo good! I ate the fruits and veggies. My saving grace was that the only chocolate they had there was sponge candy, which I hate. I silently thanked god for her moment of kindness, also passing on the ranch dip since teenagers haven't yet learned about the gaucheness of double dipping.
So we start the show, and everything is going along nicely, until about 15 minutes into the show when the ENTIRE sound system gives out. Kaput, mort, tod. Real dead. I must admit though, I like when stuff like this happens. I call it "Kamikaze Theater", because you gotta do what you gotta do and hope it works, or you go down with the plane. And this is where the lead saved the show: The girl could project, and knew enough to get bigger on stage, and really throw her lines to the audience. Our beautiful Joseph, however, was completely inexperienced and couldn't hang (so to speak). Whatever part of the story the narrator isn't telling, Joseph is, and when he was singing, the storyline was lost because we couldn't hear him at all. The band had to compensate as well. We've got a piano, two keyboards, bass, guitar, drums, and various wind instruments. The horns put mutes in their bells. Keyboardists never stop playing because they believe themselves far too important to do so, even though the pianist could have gone home on dress rehearsal night and never be missed. The bass player sat out on tunes where one of the keyboard players was playing his bass part, why we didn't know, since there WAS in fact, a real bass player there. I also sat out for alot of the music, the parts that are doubled by the keyboards. I just played the guitar solos and "guitaristic" parts. I also played the rest of the show on my acoustic guitar, including the driving, distorted power chord parts! LOL. I called it "Joseph Unplugged".
Overall, it worked out okay, since it was a forgiving audience of moms and grandmas!
After the show, I headed out in my tux to Roxy's lesbo bar. Everytime I get my hair done I get lucky. So I figured I'd give it another shot. I walk to the bar for a beer, right next to this old school butch.
(Quick history lesson for straight folks and queers too young to know, since they don't teach this in school: In the lesbian world of the 40's and 50's you were either butch -the man- or femme - the woman. Butches didn't go with butches, and femmes didn't go with femmes. Butches looked as much like men as they could, and they never moved in on another butch's girl.)
So I walk up to the bar next to this old butch. Picture it: 5'0, about 60-65, black hair cut really really short and close to her head. Wearing jeans and a button up shirt with a vest. And I don't know whatever happened to charm, but this woman goes "WHOA HONEY WOW YOU LOOK GREAT IN THAT TUX ARE YOU ALONE ARE YOU SINGLE WOW WHAT'S THE OCCASION WOW ARE YOU HERE ALONE?!?!?!?!?!
Can we say desperate? She's gonna mash me and not even offer to buy my drink? Knowing it would get her off my back, I lied. Totally. No, I'm not single, sorry. WOW THAT'S OKAY HONEY WHAT A SHAME YOU LOOK GREAT! So, I took my beer and moved far away. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my only hit of the night. A hot babe in a tux with a bagful of latex gloves in the car and that was the best I could do. Is there something wrong with me?
Saturday, March 8. Two shows today. And I wake up with my rashy nose now looking like the flesh eating virus has attacked me. Herpes, says one person. I don't HAVE herpes! Shingles, says another. And still another "Looks like a chemical burn". Look, I ain't been eating pussy or snorting cocaine, so whafuck? I slather makeup on it and go to my shows. A new sound system saves the day and the shows are great. The kids did an amazing job. I pack up my gear and go back to Dee's. I put hot towels and ointment on my nose, which now has about 6 little disgusting, pussed up blisters. I drink beer.
Sunday, March 9. Dee, Katie, Char and I and another friend Deb (a/k/a G.O.D.) go to breakfast. My flesh eating virus makes me feel like I have a nose like Jimmy Durante or W.C. Fields. Or maybe like that kid in the movie "Mask". But what am I gonna do? Pretend it ain't there and pretend nobody is noticing it? Forget it. I go to breakfast and I announce "I have the flesh eating virus on my nose, or maybe shingles, so if you haven't had chicken pox tell me now so I can leave, and look at it now and get it over with". I have an extra-garlicky breakfast, then we all decide to be girly and go back to Dee's and highlight Katie and Char's hair. Dee does Char, I do Katie, Deb is the supply girl, handing us our foils and dye brush. And darn it if we didn't do a damn good job on those girls! I muse that this was the girliest thing I've ever done in my whole life, which it is.
Later, I go to hang with some old pit band pals I haven't seen in a year, celebrating the 21st birthday of one of them, Alan, whom I'd marry if I liked boys and was 20 years younger. We had dinner then headed over to the new Casino. And there's a whole blog story in itself!
Alan and I drove together, while Bridget and her boyfriend had to stop first then meet up with us there. Alan and are I waiting and waiting, listening to the jazz band. I offer to buy him a beer. Two Coronas. NINE FUCKING DOLLARS! I coulda bought the whole six pack for that, for Christ's sake. So we're still waiting for them by the door, then Alan says, there's a front door too. Maybe they came in there? We laugh our asses off and go looking for them. We couldn't find them anywhere. Alan figures they're having a "Happy Ending", so we said fuck it and started playing. I played "wheel of fortune" and got to spin the wheel. It's going round and round and coming up on the 1000 mark. It lands on the 1000 mark........ AND...........click ONE past. AAAAAUGH! I get 25. Quarters, mind you. I'm cheap.
We finally find Bridget and beau and we wander around to different machines. We lose and lose. I've already spent 20 bucks, including the NINE FUCKING DOLLARS the beer cost me. I sit at a poker slot game to spend that last five bucks I have. Alan says, "sit at the end machine, they payoff more". So I do. I put in my first quarter and get dealt a straigh, ace high. I win........ 25 bucks! I cash out immediately and keep my money, happy to have broken even.
But then I discover that if you're gambling, you can get ALL DRINKS FOR FREE! I tell my friends I paid NINE FUCKING DOLLARS for two beers, dammit. So I tell them I want something out of this damn casino. I devise a plan to chase down a cocktail waitress and get a free drink, which we do, literally walking the casino until we found a cocktail waitress. We tell her we're sitting here (at the random slots we were in front of) and we all ordered drinks. I ordered a rum and coke, screw the beer. And we sat there
not gambling until she came with our drinks. And let me say, they didn't skimp on the rum! Woo hoo!
I woulda had more, but we all had to go. I drove Alan home, then went back to Dee's and watched Silence of the Lambs.
And that, my friends, was my week. The highs and the lows of it, flesh eating virus and all. My nose is still kind of gross, but healing. It's all scabby now. And I'm supposed to have my photo shoot for my CD cover on Thursday, but it ain't looking so good for that. Hmmm...
The blog stops here! Smooches!!!
